


blood // water (the redamancy remix)

by goddcoward



Series: talk to me pretty (here kitty, kitty) [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: ?? - Freeform, AND then the sequel to take the place of ap, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Abuse, For That Matter, Fuuinjutsu, GAY DRAMA BABES., Hurt/Comfort, ITS HERE BABES., Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Jinchuuriki Senju Tobirama, M/M, Politics, SHES HAPPENING., Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, THE REWRITE..........., Torture, adn, dumbass senju tobirama, dumbass uchiha madara, gifting this to myself, hmm. maybe, i deserve presents, i should say that this CAN be read independently, i think?? does it count if they fall in love in 2.5 seconds but just never get together, it is its own story so dont feel like, lets curate some good energy!!!, ok for clarification, so its gonna be. pretty damn long lmao, thats self love honey!, this is gonna be all of b // w, you have to slog through the original to read it!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2020-11-26 23:51:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20938844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddcoward/pseuds/goddcoward
Summary: in the beginning, there is nothing, and then there is the ten-tails, and the sage, and the birth of the second out of nine bijuu, matatabi of the two-tails.this isimportant.in the beginning, there is a war, and two little boys strong enough and sad enough to make peace with each other before they make peace between their clans, and a soulbond. in which there is a power-hungry shadow-creature seeking to bring its mother back to earth, and several instances of eyestealing, and, eventually, the advent of the jinchuuriki.this is also important. this? this changeseverything.in which senju tobirama does the impossible several times over, achieves some level of notoriety for crimes committed on impulse, makes peace with a bijuu, and somewhere along the way, falls in love. in which uchiha madara and senju hashirama share a dream, a brain cell, and an inclination for drama. in which uzumaki mito is a lesbian (!!!), and in which there are several fight scenes, breakups and makeups, and, perhaps, a happy ending.





	1. I - i am the people

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goddcoward](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddcoward/gifts).
  * Inspired by [blood // water](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17491346) by [goddcoward](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddcoward/pseuds/goddcoward). 

> HEY HEY HEY GUESS WHO'S BACK BACK BACK BACK AGAIN GAIN GAIN, YES IM BACK BACK BACK TELL A FRIEND END END
> 
> anyway here is chapter one of the redamancy remix! it begins with some Boys because while i hate hashimada with a burning fucking passion im so emo about hashirama and madara and their like. tragic homosexual-coded ride or die bromance. its like the feelings i have about hashitobi. ship?? skip!! familial angst and h/c?? hell yeah babey.
> 
> im skipping english so that i can write and post this so that i dont lose steam. youre welcome for failing my fucking class that i mcfucking PAID FOR to bring yall content. literally please dont tell my mom on me ;-/
> 
> i might go crazy go stupid and make like. a playlist. and maybe some moodboards. idk. if i do they'll be posted together in a separate document that's still in this series
> 
> ok im gonna be a hardass to myself and say NO DELETING CHAPTERS CAUSE I DONT LIKE EM. if i impulse post then i fucking impulse post and thats it fellas!!!! hopefully updates should be relatively consistent and also not like with forever in between them but no promises cause im a cagey queen like that ;-)

UCHIHA CLAN COMPOUND, HI NO KUNI, WARRING CLANS ERA

Smoke stings at his eyes as the funeral pyre burns higher, higher, higher, and by the time his mother’s body has been reduced to naught but ashes and shards of charred bone, Madara’s had enough. 

He has to get out of here, and so he does.

He darts out of the Uchiha compound under the cover of the night and runs until his soft feet bleed and blister beneath him, and then farther still, until he can see dawn breaking in a hundred thousand warm jewel-tones, glittering soft and pink on the horizon with the promise of a new day.

Fire is cleansing, Madara reminds himself. Fire is cleansing, and it has rid Kaa-chan’s body of her material impurities, and now her soul is free to move on to the afterlife. 

She never should have died, though. She was like a mother bear to him, so ferocious and protective and fiercely loving, and he just – can’t believe she’s _gone,_ just like that. He knows the dangers of the Senju – everyone does – but they never should have dared to come directly to the Uchiha compound. Kaa-chan shouldn’t have been ripped open into two, Madara’s youngest sibling torn right out of her womb and pulverized. She was simply too strong to die like that, and that’s a cold, hard fact that he’ll hold on to until his heart is black and icy from the force of his grief.

He doesn’t cry. He’s already nine, which means he’s a blooded warrior, the survivor of dozens of assassination attempts like the one that stole Kaa-chan away from him, sixteen battles, and twenty-three missions. He’s too old and experienced to cry. 

He cries. He’s only nine, after all.

He’s only _nine._ He shouldn’t have to be a blooded warrior or a Clan heir or a survivor or anything of the sort. He should just be able to be nine, and he can’t. No one can. There is no youth in the Warring Clans Era who is afforded a childhood, and noble status will not save Madara from the grips of war any more than it will doom him. 

He misses his mother so gods damned much that it physically pains him, and when he reaches the Nakano on the southwestern border of Uchiha territory, all he does is collapse onto the sandy shore and cry until his eyes are puffy and reddened at the edges.

Not with the Sharingan, of course. He’s too young and too weak to have manifested the dōjutsu yet. Tajima says that he’s going to be kicked out of the line of succession like Minami-nee had been if he doesn’t find a way to awaken it soon, but – if Kaa-chan’s death wasn’t emotionally traumatic enough to stir his eyes to their full power, then what the hell will be? 

Once he’s cried out all his tears, his eyes feel gummy and heavy, and even though it’s not even noon yet, he feels so exhausted from his misery and from his recent lack of sleep that he just falls unconscious right there on the riverbank, feet dipped into the shallows so that the gentle current can clean his open sores and cool his burning wounds.

When he wakes, the sun is well past its apex in the sky, and there’s a strange boy standing in front of him, just on the surface of the water. 

How _snotty._ The river is plenty shallow enough for him to just stand on its bottom without any sort of danger of getting his dumb looking hakama pants wet, and anything else is just an obnoxious show of chakra control that Madara isn’t in the mood for. 

He’s not feeling particularly charitable, not at all, so when the boy offers him a hand – small, soft, paler on the palms and undersides of the fingers than on the top – he responds with a snort, kicking him in the stomach with enough force that he stumbles backwards into the water with a mighty splash. It makes his injured foot hurt, but the pain is more than worth it for the sight of the stranger flailing around on his ass, bowl cut dripping river water and big brown eyes glossy with tears.

“What was _that_ for!” he wails, and Madara will never admit to it, but perhaps that victimized tone makes him feel a little guilty for just assaulting someone who was clearly trying to help him. “I just wanted to see if you were okay since you were all dead-looking on the Uchiha side of the river and you’re so pale that you’re really, _really_ crispy now, and why are you so _mean!_ That was not nice!” 

“I am not nice,” Madara declares piously, and the other boy gives him what must be a very well-practiced pout.

Unfortunately for him, Izuna is six, and he sees that expression often enough at home that he’s entirely immune to it, even if this stranger’s pout is a hundred times more compelling than that of his own little brother.

The other boy, now that Madara is looking at him, could not more obviously be a Senju, with his brown skin and brown hair and brown eyes and stupid hakama pants, and he’d mentioned something about the Uchiha side of the river, meaning that he must have come from the Senju side.

He stiffens. His mother and his unborn sibling were just _slaughtered_ by a squadron of this boy’s Clansmen, and he’s – he has the _gall_ to cry because he fell into the Nakano? Madara lost his _kaa-chan _and this bastard-! 

“Oh, hey, hey,” the Senju brat says, suddenly soft and open, eyebrows quirking, tone bemused. “Hey, are you alright? You look – really upset. Is something wrong?”

Madara’s lips twitch into a nasty little sneer even as hot, unwelcome tears well up in his eyes. “Not like _you_ would know what that’s like. It has nothing to do with how my mother was an Uchiha, and how your Clanmates decided that she had to answer for _that_ crime with her _life.”_

_“Madara-kun, do you want to come feel the baby kick? You’re going to be an aniki soon!”_

_With wide, reverent eyes, Madara approaches his mother’s swollen stomach, staring at it like doing so will make his baby sibling arrive faster. “What will you call them, Kaa-chan?”_

_“I was thinking Izuna for a boy…”_

The Senju freezes, eyes going wide and dipping down to look at Madara’s navy-blue overshirt and onyx-black eyes, and suddenly there’s a cold, cold hardness on his face where before there had only been warmth and concern. It’s not directed at him, not directed at Madara, but the hatred is _there,_ and with a sinking feeling he realizes that peace may really be impossible—

—but then the hate is gone, just as quickly as it had come, and the Senju boy’s face crumples. He doesn’t bother to pick himself up from the riverbed, just tugging his knees close to his chest and wrapping his arms around his legs and _sobbing, _ugly and grief-stricken, throat convulsing around his misery.

He sounds like he’s lost _everything,_ and it’s then that Madara realizes that the Uchiha fight the Senju just as much as the Senju fight the Uchiha.

“…You too?” 

Without looking up, without stopping his wheezes, the bowl cut bobs in an affirmative, and – well. 

This boy is no child-killer. This boy is no monster. Despite his name, despite his lineage, he’s soft and kind and _broken_ on the inside, broken because of the stupid fucking _war_ that just won’t end, the one that keeps claiming senseless, needless casualties on both sides despite the fact that nobody can remember why they’re fighting anymore.

It takes a couple of minutes for the Senju boy to gather himself enough to speak. “My – my brothers,” he says, snuffling and gasping on the syllables of the words. “We – Kawarama died a few years ago, but we had to bury Itama just this morning, and there’s no guarantee that Tobirama won’t be next, and he’s the _last one, _and just – I’m losing _everyone_ and it’s stupid and I just don’t want to stay up at night wondering if everyone – if everyone I know is gonna _die_ because of this dumb war!”

_“You too,”_ Madara says, wondrous, and he means something entirely different this time. “You don’t believe in the war either?”

The Senju boy’s head snaps up, his wet brown eyes stretching dinner-plate wide. “I – what?”

In his chest, something pulses, a knot of nervous energy that he’s never noticed before. Madara has lost brothers to the fighting too, has watched his father sacrifice Clanmate after Clanmate to the gnashing jaws of combat, and the idea that there could be a _Senju_ who thinks the same thing he does? The idea that there could be a Senju who is like him in any way at all?

It is nothing short of _revolutionary._

Perhaps, if this boy could be human, then there’s the smallest chance that his family could be too. Not the ones who killed Kaa-chan – Madara will see their heads on spikes and still won’t be satisfied – but the other ones, children forced out onto battlefields too soon, parents who have lost toddlers and teenagers alike to the vicious bite of the wars, cousins and in-laws and elders who are just _tired_ of all the deaths. 

“Peace. Do you think it’s possible?” 

The boy wipes at his hears, smearing saltwater and mucous all along his forearms, and when he finally speaks, his voice is so quiet that Madara nearly misses it altogether. 

“…With all my heart.” 

He decides then and there that this boy, Senju or not, kin of the child-killers or not, is _protected._ This boy is Madara’s, now, and he won’t let go, as is his way. If the Senju dies – when he dies, more likely, but Madara doesn’t want to consider that, doesn’t want to think about losing what could be his only like-minded peer to the Pure Lands in the way he’s lost nearly everything else – there will be _rage._ Madara will find the shinobi among his own kin who ended his life, and he will_ make them pay._

He stands on bare, blistered soles and offers a hand to his new, nameless brother, the not-Uchiha who believes in the impossible just like he does, hauling the other boy up when he takes it, not releasing his hand when he’s on his feet once more. 

“Madara,” he says.

The Senju boy cocks his head to the side. “…What?”

“Madara,” Madara repeats, more insistent this time. “My name.”

Moments pass before the Senju straightens in realization, taking a half-step back even as he reaches out to cling to Madara’s outstretched arm. “You – you’re Tajima’s _heir?”_

There’s no point in lying about it, and if this boy learns that he’s going to be the Clan Head one day, their dream comes that much closer to reality.

“Yeah. You?” 

“My name is Hashirama,” the boy offers with a crooked smile, wiping away the lingering evidence of his crying with one hand and grasping tight at Madara with the other.

He recognizes the name, recognizes the inflection of his speech, the noble tilt in his posture. This boy is Butsuma’s _heir,_ the eldest Senju son, and he—

Well. They might just be able to make this work.

“Alright,” Madara says briskly, shaking Hashirama off like he’s a burr and shoving his bangs out of his eyes. “Meet me here in a fortnight, same time, same place. Late afternoon, right at this bend in the river. I’m going to have to make sure you survive, because I can’t have any other Senju demon taking your place, taking away my dream.”

Hashirama’s brow furrows, and is he crying _again?_ “What, Madara, no _fair,_ it was my dream first!”

“I brought it up before you did!”

“Well – I mentioned it first! Saying that the wars are bad and all that!” 

“There’s a _difference_ between thinking the wars are bad and thinking that peace is _good,_ you idiot!” 

“Wh- so _mean!_ Kicking me into the river and now calling me an idiot like Tobirama doesn’t do that all the time anyway!”

“Tobirama,” Madara says, eyebrows touching his hairline, “must be a genius and a saint to think so.”

Hashirama scowls and throws a stone from the riverbed at him, but his aim is clumsy and it’s easy to dodge. “Sage, you’d be _perfect_ for each other, both so _smart_ and so _rude_. I bet you’re soulmates.”

He blanches, then, because despite Hashirama being sort of maybe not so terribly bad, having a _Senju_ as his _soulmate_ is nothing short of a nightmare scenario. 

“What’s that face for? Tobirama is a very good ninja, you know! You’d be lucky to be his soulmate!”

“Good ninja,” Madara says primly, brushing the sand off his shirt, “does not mean _good person.”_

Hashirama hurls another rock at him, but it strikes true this time, and Madara is thrown off-balance just enough that it’s easy for the Senju to get him in a decent chokehold and drag him into the river. 

It’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and when a pair of child-size sandals washes up on the shore as he watches Hashirama dart away into the belly of Senju territory, there’s a strange sensation he can’t ever recall experiencing before.

Something that feels an awful lot like _hope._


	2. II - i am the storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oop it's been a while and i've had most of this pretty much written so f 😔 
> 
> anyway i hope yall enjoy!

SENJU CLAN COMPOUND, HI NO KUNI, WARRING CLANS ERA

AT THAT SAME TIME

Itama comes home from his first mission as a true shinobi belly-up on a tarp, dark eyes glassy and bicolored hair dusty and stomach torn open by the vicious sharp bite of Uchiha blades, breath coming in weak, rasping gasps, gaze focused on something only he can see.

Chichi-ue takes one look at him and his face hardens into stone. He orders the medics to take him to the Black Temple, the one where they bring all the dying bodies, the one where corpses are prepared for burial, and Hashirama shrieks so loudly in his denial that he thinks for a moment that his lungs might burst.

Tobirama slips one small, pale hand into his and tries to tug him away to his favorite garden, the one with the cherry tree and the violets and the paper-white lilies that Mama had helped him plant and cultivate, but he refuses to be moved, shoving his brother aside and rushing over to the two nin carrying Itama’s twitching, bleeding body to the temple. His tears blur his eyes with saltwater until he can hardly see at all, but when he reaches out to grasp at one of Itama’s little, pudgy hands – small, soft, he’s _six years old_ – he thinks that the fingers tighten around his own, just the barest amount, and his sobs shake his entire body so violently that it’s all he can do to keep standing.

“Anija,” Tobirama says, quiet and solemn, so quiet that Hashirama doesn’t hear him at first. “Anija, he has to be alone now with the medics.”

_“No!”_ Hashirama screeches, face ablaze, nose all wet. “No, no, bring him _back—”_

“Anija,” Tobirama says, voice warping strangely, “he’s not _coming_ back.”

Hashirama’s throat burns as he screams, and when he collapses to his knees, finally out of breath, Tobirama sits beside him, holding his hand, waiting for them to bring Itama out of the Black Temple.

When they do, it’s well past sunset. An entire day has passed.

Itama is draped in a heavy black cloak from head to toe, not a single centimeter of his warm smile or his soft hair or his big, loving heart visible through the thick shroud of mourning silk, and Tobirama holds him as he cries so hard that he chokes. The attendants who carry him out on the little wheeled stretcher spare sideways glances for the sight of them, crouched together on the ground, and they do not stop.

Chichi-ue must be informed: he has lost another son.

Tobirama’s face is stony and cold, and his lack of response to the death of his _twin_ has Hashirama’s blood boiling. They were closer to each other than to anyone, even Hashirama, Hashirama who practically _raised_ them as they raised Kawarama in turn, and he’s not even sniffling, not even a little.

He skips dinner, too nauseous to bother contemplating the idea of eating, and he only manages to fall asleep when his tears run dry, long after the stars rise.

The next morning, they have the funeral, and miracle of miracles, Hashirama’s able to cry again, even though he must be dehydrated like a little miserable Senju prune.

“Anija,” Tobirama murmurs from beside him, ever their father’s perfect, obedient soldier, “you have to stop crying. Chichi-ue will scold you.”

Hashirama’s breath stutters in his chest, and the tears only come faster, hotter, blurring his eyesight until even the shapes of his own hands are indistinct and warped, throat warping around the sound of a scream as mucous clogs up his sinuses and smears down his face.

“I-ta-ma,” he sobs, and he’s not proud of how _broken_ his voice sounds, not proud of what face he thinks he sees his (last) little brother make. “I-ta-ma…Tobira-ma, he’s _de-ead…”_

“Yes,” Tobirama says gravely, because he’s always been a serious, literal child, ever since he was very small. “Yes, Anija, he is. You have to stop, though. Chichi-ue is coming over here and he’ll be upset if he sees you like this.”

That doesn’t help at _all,_ though, and he’s still crying when Butsuma arrives in front of them, tall and stern and no doubt scowling even though Hashirama couldn’t hope to discern his actual expression through the saltwater spilling out of his tear ducts.

“Boy,” he barks, voice deep and gravelly and _angry,_ and that’s all that he is now, anymore, that’s all that he’s ever been since Mama died, and now that Itama and Kawarama are dead too it hasn’t improved—

—_now that Itama and Kawarama are dead too—_

Chichi-ue’s words are lost beneath the sensation of Hashirama choking on his sobs, and although he stands there for at least a minute, repeatedly trying to speak, he doesn’t hear a thing he has to say.

Itama and Kawarama are dead too.

Who could say that Tobirama won’t be next? Cold, calculating Tobirama, ninja prodigy Tobirama, viciously intelligent Tobirama, caring, detached Tobirama, Tobirama who follows around cousin Tōka like a little lost duckling, Tobirama who doesn’t _ever_ cry even when he cuts open his hands on shuriken, even when Chichi-ue strikes him, even when their brothers _die_ and go to the Pure Lands, never to return to the world of the waking.

Tobirama who forces himself between Hashirama and Chichi-ue, Tobirama whose small head snaps backwards as he falls with the strength of the blow he intercepts to save his stupid, silly, good-for-nothing anija, Tobirama who sits there on the ground with a bruised cheek and a bleeding lip, still trying to convince their father to give Hashirama some amount of leniency for his grief through the pain of enduring what must have been a vicious slap.

Something _breaks._

Butsuma doesn’t try to stop him when he darts through the throngs of black-and-white-cloaked Senju who have come to see little Itama laid to rest in the earth, his robe folded right over left, his abdomen sutured together and thickened by the bandages that have been wrapped around his tummy to ensure that his organs don’t spill out even with the stitches. It’s just – it’s just too much for Hashirama, and though it’s shameful that he can’t be a real ninja, a real man, shameful that he’s an emotional mess too childish to withstand the funeral of his own baby brother when Tobirama is there, without his twin, being beaten around and still keeping a strong front…

Hashirama isn’t _like_ Tobirama. He can’t do that.

He goes.

His lungs burn with the effort of breathing as he runs, but he can’t stop, can’t slow down, can’t do anything but continue to put distance between himself and the Senju compound, that lair of misery and wartime sacrifice.

It’s hours before he realizes that he’s on the very edges of Senju territory, that he lost his sandals at some point in the recent past, and that he is hopelessly stranded in the belly of the thick, dark forests that shade so much of Fire Country from the sun.

It’s been so long since he was beaten that he nearly fails to remember what it feels like, and he just _left_ Tobirama there, left his last brother _alone_ with _their father_ when he _knows_ that Chichi-ue prefers to take out his anger with Hashirama on his second son so as not to harm his heir, possessed of the legendary Mokuton, virtually untouchable due to the vanishingly rare presence of the Senju kekkei genkai.

Tobirama bruises so _easily,_ his albino-pale skin blooming blue-black-red beneath the hateful hold of Chichi-ue’s hands.

Dusk falls before he’s able to navigate his way out of the densest knots of trees, and he collapses in a heap at the roots of a pine, curling up into their welcome wooden embrace with the scent of sap thick in his sinuses and grief heavy in his small chest.

The following afternoon sees Hashirama following a distant tributary of the Nakano upstream, walking on the water as it roils beneath his toes, crystalline-clear and icy with snowmelt. The river widens and deepens as he goes and the threes thin until he’s back out in open air, the familiar sweet smell of grasses a welcome sensation. He thinks he knows where he is, now; he’s been lost here before, and even though he doesn’t have Tobirama and Itama to fish him out of the wilds this time, he’s going to be ten in the fall, and he should be able to find his way home.

At the bend where the water doubles round, the current has dug out a deep hole in the riverbed, a known haunt of Tobirama’s favorite subspecies of carp, notoriously difficult to catch, bigger than a man when fully grown with scales like armor and torpedo-like bodies of solid, rippling muscle. Follow the Nakano for twenty minutes past the fishing spot and then take a sharp turn to the southeast, and it’s hardly two kilometers back to the Senju compound from there. With the sun as his compass even Hashirama would have trouble getting lost; he should be home in no time.

Things proceed as planned until he actually arrives at the fishing spot to see a small body stranded on the Uchiha shore, pale-skinned and sunburnt and wrapped all in a dark blue mantle. _Uchiha blue._

Hashirama doesn’t think of that before he’s running across the water, feet leaving little ripples on the surface as he darts towards what must be a corpse, left behind by the child-killers, another victim of his father’s disastrous war.

He’s just about to start crying again, mourning for the nameless youth who will never see their family again when the body groans and sits up, and very manfully he represses a terrified shriek, stumbling back and nearly losing his balance on the surface of the water.

As the kid blinks exhaustion out of their eyes, Hashirama clambers back up to his feet. Now that he’s looking properly, they appear to be a boy, just around his age if not a little younger, and his feet are torn and ragged and blistered in an awful way that must hurt like fire.

Now that he’s looking properly, it’s obvious that the other child is an Uchiha, with the bleary dark eyes and ruffled black hair and fine facial features of his Clan’s sworn enemies.

He has a choice to make. The boy is tired and disoriented and injured to boot – Hashirama could kill him here and now with the kunai he always keeps on his person in case of emergencies. He could shove the blade right up beneath the Uchiha kid’s soft white chin with all the force his ten-year-old arms can muster, and he’d return home to a chichi-ue who would be proud instead of angry. He’d make himself a man in the eyes of his Clan, a true ninja in the eyes of his father, perhaps even a worthy anija in the eyes of Tobirama.

He could do it. He _could._

Hashirama holds out his hand, and the rest is history.

**Author's Note:**

> seriously tho a HUGE thanks to you guys for consistently supporting me thru a truly ridiculous amount of bullshit. i hope you all enjoy and please do leave some love to tell me if you liked it or hated it or if i made an embarrassing dumb error somewhere that's going to require correction
> 
> last pathetic request for comments blease im a thirsty whore and they make me happy :-)


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